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Just in time to really annoy your family and friends with holiday greetings, Skype for Android has updated to version 2.6, bringing with it support for sharing photos, videos and other files with your contacts. Being able to quickly transfer pics of your gifts and clips of children tearing into meticulously wrapped presents to people on your buddy list is just the most notable change to the VoIP client. Plenty of other tweaks have taken place, even if they’re primarily under the hood. For one, video quality has improved specifically on devices running NVIDIA’s Tegra 2. A bunch more phones have also been added to the app’s whitelist, including Motorola’s latest super-phones the Droid RAZR and Droid 4. You can head on over to the Android Market now to get the latest Skype update.

The great thinkers of the world have long known a secret that we’re now happy to disclose: it’s not necessity that’s the mother invention, but rather laziness. Fortunately, expending a great deal of effort on a project — simply to perform a task effortlessly — sometimes brings very cool results. A concept app known as ZuneVoice easily passes muster in this realm, which is used to control Zune software on the PC with only a standard microphone and spoken commands. As you can see in the demo video, its creator, keyboardp, is able to play individual songs, issue commands such a “pause” or “next song”, and even display full-screen music videos from YouTube. The developer even crafted an app for his Lumia 800 known as PhoneZune, which serves as a remote control for times when he’s away from the box. Neither application is yet publicly available, though feedback is welcome. Next, we’re told to expect Kinect integration. Perhaps one day, these gems will see the light of day.

Google’s already put its stamp on the great outdoors, what with its Street View fleet chronicling the well-trodden ways of our world for Maps. Which is precisely why Mountain View’s turning its attention inward for that next, great navigation innovation, as it attempts to chart a course through the wilds of indoor spaces. Hitting the Android Market in the U.S. and Japan today, the company’s ever-popular app gets a full version bump to 6.0, bringing with it the inclusion of retail and airport floor plans.

Still tempted by the fruit of another? If you’re looking Microsoft’s way, but aren’t quite ready to toss your adoration for iOS or Android aside, the coders in Redmond are giving you an alternative to quitting cold turkey. By visiting http://aka.ms/wpdemo on one’s iOS or Android browser, you’ll be immediately tunneled into an emulation of Windows Phone 7.

Windows Phone continues to shore up its app and game selection, hitting 40,000 apps in just over a year since its inception. Granted, there’s still plenty of catching up to do before Microsoft’s third way can go toe-to-toe with Android and iOS, but it’s another (substantial) step in the right direction. According to All About Windows Phone, new content is now being added at the heady rate of around 165 apps per day, although it notes that a chunk of previously released apps are now non-existent, subtracting around 5,000 from the scores we have here. However, app devs have cranked it up a gear, adding around the same amount of new apps in only the last month — presumably galvanized by Nokia’s much-publicized WinPho debut and other Mango-powered delights arriving in stores. Will it crack the 50k mark by the end of the year? We’re sure Mr. Ballmer won’t be betting against it.

In a move that can be simultaneously described as puzzling and pragmatic, Microsoft has decided to bring its Bing for Mobile app to Android and iOS before launching it on its very own Windows Phone platform. The company announced the release in a blog post this week, highlighting the app’s most noteworthy features, including a revamped maps module, a new deals service and real-time transit feeds. Interestingly enough, Redmond also based its app on HTML5, rather than Silverlight, in the hopes of providing greater continuity across mobile browser and app interfaces. Only at the very end of the post did Microsoft mention Windows Phone 7: “We’re working to release the same consistent experience for RIM and Windows Phone 7 devices in the future, and will share more details as they become available.” At first glance, this decision may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but it also makes a lot of sense, considering the fact that Android and iOS comprise the bulk of the consumer market (and, of course, the fact that Bing is already integrated within Windows Phone 7). It appears, then, that Microsoft is simply trying to get Bing out to the widest initial audience, which seems pretty logical.

If you’ve been getting bored with that stale version of DoubleTwist you’re sporting, get ready for a breath of fresh air. The company has announced the next major version of its music player now awaits Android faithul in the Marketplace — and will hit the Amazon Appstore later in the week. New features include a new grid view for album art, premium EQ (if you’re running Android 2.3 or higher), an AirSync storage location option and a new playback screen which enables sliding to see previous / upcoming tracks. If you’re still not impressed, DoubleTwist promises another update in December that will be similar in stature. Take a look after the break for a few more screen shots, should you need more convincing and get ready to show off all of those Ben Folds album covers.

After having already arrived on a host of Android slates, iPads and even TouchPads, Zinio’s reader app has now made its way to the newest tablet platform — the Kindle Fire. The magazine marketplace made its debut on the Amazon Appstore today, just in time for today’s grand launch. Available as a free download, Zinio brings more than 5,000 magazine titles to Amazon’s new slab, including The Economist, Rolling Stone and US Weekly, among others. New subscribers, meanwhile, will benefit from an extra $25 in credit, redeemable through March of 2012. Let the tablet war begin!

Has a Windows Phone app just popped the cork on a new Nokia handset? It very well may have, based on the above image. Extracted from the “I’m a WP7″ app and first identified by the folks over at WP Central, this screenshot purports to reveal a Nokia device codenamed “Champagne” — a rather delectable moniker that, until now, wasn’t even on our radar. At this point, little else is known about this mystery phone, though according to WP Central, it’s running Windows Phone 7.10.8711 — suggesting, perhaps, the presence of Tango, the Mango successor for low-end devices. Could this be a mythical, LTE-equipped Lumia 900 / Ace handset for Verizon Wireless? Could we see it at this year’s CES? Only time will tell, but we’ll let you know as soon as we hear more.

Do overclockers tend to carry iPhones? Some do, surely, which is why MSI has released Afterburner for all iOS devices over at the App Store. Like the Android version we reported a while back, it hooks up to the main Afterburner utility on your PC to allow remote tweaking and monitoring of your MSI motherboard. You don’t even have to touch your case to clear the static.